The populist party SMER has won the parliamentary elections in Slovakia. This became apparent on Sunday morning after counting the results in 99 percent of the constituencies Slovak media. The party of former Prime Minister Robert Fico (59) obtained 23.3 percent of the votes. Michal Šimecka’s pro-European party Progressive Slovakia follows with 17 percent. The social-democratic HLAS received about 15 percent of the votes.
About 68 percent of voters in Slovakia went to the polls on Saturday. SMER had been leading in the polls for weeks. Fico’s campaign was strongly anti-European. He also wants to stop support for Ukraine and is against the country’s NATO membership. If Fico becomes prime minister again, it could have major consequences in Europe. Slovakia then turns into an ally of Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister who is the only one in the European Union to support Russian President Putin.
Fico was Prime Minister of Slovakia twice before, from 2006 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2018. The last time he resigned after an investigative journalist and his fiancée were murdered. At the time, the journalist was working on a story about the relationship between politicians, the mafia and the business world. The killings sparked huge protests in Slovakia. The opposite of Fico’s party, Progressive Slovakia, was founded at that time by Šimecka, a former journalist.
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